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Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

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Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#51

Post by somishere »

renewiltord wrote: post #17

Extraordinary home! Great design. Especially love the cat stuff. I have to say, it’s wild that something “moderate” like an i5 / 4070 build is so powerful these days. It’s middle of the line in this era but it’s enough to play practically anything. Also, this is a classic example of the power of leverage. $200k down on a $1m home, home goes to $2m gives you a $1m profit on ~$240k. Accidental, in this case, but nice.

to see that upside on a home requires you 1. sell and 2. buy somewhere cheaper (or not buy at all) ... Otherwise it's a zero sum game. Home for a home.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#52

Post by renewiltord »

somishere wrote: post #51
renewiltord wrote: post #17

Extraordinary home! Great design. Especially love the cat stuff. I have to say, it’s wild that something “moderate” like an i5 / 4070 build is so powerful these days. It’s middle of the line in this era but it’s enough to play practically anything. Also, this is a classic example of the power of leverage. $200k down on a $1m home, home goes to $2m gives you a $1m profit on ~$240k. Accidental, in this case, but nice.

to see that upside on a home requires you 1. sell and 2. buy somewhere cheaper (or not buy at all) ... Otherwise it's a zero sum game. Home for a home.

Indeed that’s what OP did. Bought in the Bay low, then sold high and moved to Austin, where presumably the increase in value is again sufficiently high because Austin prices skyrocketed in the last 5 years.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#53

Post by buildsjets »

kentonv wrote: post #35
eertami wrote: post #34

The biggest surprise for me was seeing the desks with no mouse pads (or if you wanted to build it into the cabinet you'd probably want to stick down a desk pad). But I also in my circles everyone takes their own keyboard/mouse/pad/headphones as those are the things it's hard to adjust to - admittedly my priorities could be completely different.

I mostly haven't used a mouse pad in decades... until recently. I now have a mouse pad on my main work desk because the wood where my mouse was kept attracting weird black spots. They were easy to clean off but weirded me out. And I guess it would be sad if I ended up with a permanent wear spot... But I think the LAN parties don't really happen often enough to cause much wear. In 10 years at the old place no one used…

May I recommend the 3M Precise Mouse Pad with Repositionable Adhesive Backing? Dumb name, good product.

https://www.amazon.com/3M-Precise-Repositionable-Adhesive-MP...

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#56

Post by echoangle »

This is so cool. But the keyboard disturbed me, wouldn’t you at least want a mechanical keyboard?

> Keyboard: Logitech K120 Wired — The world's cheapest keyboard at $13 a pop. Works perfectly fine for all gaming needs.

I can’t imagine playing stuff like overwatch on a membrane office keyboard for $13 when having spent more than 100k on the setup. Especially when cheap mechanical keyboards are not that much more expensive either.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#57

Post by iwontberude »

kentonv wrote: post #29
srbloom wrote: post #20

This is super freaking cool. I'm curious how you feel about Austin vs Bay Area in terms of general quality of life, culture, things like that?

It feels pretty similar, but more chill. Distances are shorter. The sky doesn't fill with smoke for a week every year. The weather is much more interesting -- honestly I got really bored with Bay Area weather after 15 years. I even like the heat in the summer, in short intervals. There are enough tech people here to be interesting, but not enough that a random person you meet on the street is likely to be in tech. On…

Having lived in the Midwest, Texas and Bay Area I can soundly say there is no comparison which can be made about the natural splendor. Bay Area, even with smoke in the air for a week, is orders of magnitude more comfortable and interesting. In Texas people cloister into giant houses and say goodbye to enjoying nature, it’s really sad that people prefer such a reality. It lets them forget just how grand a world there is worth saving and fighting for instead of letting it all become privatized and exploited unsustainably.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#58

Post by kentonv »

RulerOf wrote: post #44

> I've never heard of anyone else having done anything like this. This surprises me! But, surely, if someone else did it, someone would have told me about it? If you know of another, please let me know! I never had the tenacity to consider my build "finished," and definitely didn't have your budget, but I built a 5-player room[1] for DotA 2 back in 2013. I got really lucky with hardware selection and ended up fightin…

Hah, you really did the VM thing? A lot of people have suggested that to me but I didn't think it'd actually work. Pretty cool!

Yeah I'm pretty sure my onboard 10G Marvell AQtion ethernet is the source of most of my stability woes. About half the time any of these machines boot up, Windows bluescreens within the first couple minutes, and I think it has something to do with the iSCSI service crashing. Never had trouble in the old house where the machines had 1G network -- but load times were painful.

Luckily if the machines don't crash in the first couple minutes, then they settle down and work fine...

Yeah I could get higher-quality 10G cards and put them in all the machines but they seem expensive...

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#59

Post by kentonv »

hunter2_ wrote: post #43
kentonv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cat room fans are standard bathroom fans. At present we just leave them on all the time -- you can see the switches taped down in the photos. I suppose it might be a good idea to rig up a sensor...

Might be able to use a flipper zero as the sensor, if the cats are chipped. Then you'll have data to catch any unusual usage, like a urinary blockage, before it becomes a serious problem! At that point you're a smart switch and Home Assistant script away from fan control.

Garply had a blockage once and he did a remarkably good job of communicating the problem to us directly!

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#60

Post by kentonv »

echoangle wrote: post #56

This is so cool. But the keyboard disturbed me, wouldn’t you at least want a mechanical keyboard? > Keyboard: Logitech K120 Wired — The world's cheapest keyboard at $13 a pop. Works perfectly fine for all gaming needs. I can’t imagine playing stuff like overwatch on a membrane office keyboard for $13 when having spent more than 100k on the setup. Especially when cheap mechanical keyboards are not that much more expen…

Honestly I've never felt it made any difference to me when gaming. I would never code on such a keyboard but for the old WASD it seems fine.

That said, guests are welcome to bring any peripherals they want. There's a USB hub at each station to plug stuff in.

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